Retreat Description

This retreat explores the natural state through the writings of two masters of sky-mind, the Dzogchen Master, Lonchenpa, and the Zen Master Hongzhi. Through dazzlingly poetic language, these two masters open verbal portals through which the aspiring practitioner can enter the natural state of boundless, open awareness and cultivate it in everyday life. Join Rev. Ryushin Marchaj and Lama Liz Monson as we dance through fields of poetic awakening, joining body, speech and mind to the wisdom, boundless love, and space of these two awakened beings.

• Explore precious texts of Dzogchen and Zen masters with experienced teachers
• Practice sky-mind, natural awareness
• Aspire to experience the natural state as Spring awakens the natural world at Wonderwell Mountain Refuge

“The field of bright spirit is an ancient wilderness that does not change. With boundless eagerness wander around this immaculate wide plain. The drifting clouds embrace the mountain; the family wind is relaxed and simple. The autumn waters display the moon in its pure brightness. Directly arriving here you will be able to recognize the mind ground dharma field that is the root source of the ten thousand forms germinating with unwithered fertility. These flowers and leaves are the whole world. So we are told that a single seed is an uncultivated field. Do not weed out the new shoots and the self will flower.” (Zen Master Hongzhi, 1091-1157)

Just as all light is subsumed within the sun as its source,
all phenomena are subsumed within awakened mind as their source—
Even the impurity and confusion in the universe of appearances and possibilities.

Whatever occurs, by examining basic space as its matrix and abode
you find that it has no foundation,
but is subsumed within the timeless freedom of mind.

Beyond labels and their meanings,
confusion and its absence are subsumed
within the true nature of phenomena, the timeless expanse,
a supremely spacious state.
(Lonchenpa, 1308-1363)